Book Review : Goosebumps - Chicken Chicken : overreaching punishment turned into a comedy highlight

They say "don't judge a book by its cover" but I do prefer a book with certain interesting cover, that's why painter, graphic designer or any other career related exist! we gotta appreciate their effort to make books become desirable!. This one example a great great example why I choose a book usually by its cover, also the synopsis.

Title : Goosebumps : Chicken Chicken

Author : R.L Stine

Year : 1997

Collation : 148 pages

Usually I would put my opinion about the book's appearance at the end of the review, but since it has become the biggest interest from the beginning, I am going to give it out earlier. The cover looks funny, creepy and intriguing, also you may have figured out what is it about, but it looks somehow a cute chicken but terrifying since it's a curse, also what the hell happened? what could have happened that made those poor characters end up getting cursed into a chicken?. 

The title and the look of the cover are simple but it explains everything. But for skeptic people or who just tend to get bored easier would be "ah it's just about some kid turned into a chicken, same old lines about goosebumps", but I think this is what makes Goosebumps special, kinda the same as the Nightmare Room, but from few Goosebumps books that I've read, some of the characters are innocent and they still get punished, some get cursed into something and some just tried to save their lives from any type of monster. Also, there weren't much resolutions at the end, it was happy for a second then R.L Stine added something to make our heart bumping again, because it didn't actually end, he wants to scare children, but somehow he did give out good endings for Fear Street which is for teenagers. 

I would probably just tell the synopsis and the sum up of the story, no detailed summary. 

Everyone in Goshen Falls knows about weird Vanessa. She dresses all in black and wears black lipstick. People say she puts spells on people. Crystal and her brother Cole made Vanessa mad. After she whispered that strange warning, "Chicken chicken" something weird has happened. Crystal's lips have turned as hard as a bird's beak, and Cole has started growing ugly white feathers all over his body.

you already know, the synopsis is basically the whole plot, but! hear me out, what keeps me reading this without pausing is the short intro, it only gets 50s pages to get to the start of its complication, since I already knew they would get cursed anyway, and the slow process that they had to go through!. Start with the chuckoo things (you know the chicken's voice), then the chapped lips that looks like a beak, later feathers, then the funniest part is when they started to peck on the ground, tempted to eat the seeds just like what chicken does. Also when they mistook a cook book named "chicken chicken chicken" as a spell book to cure them that they had to return to Vanessa's house TWICE, ugh man, it was really hilarious. But even then, I can feel their worries, how they were so embarrassed, and even how angry I was to Vanessa, how could someone do that to children? and she even cursed them again at the end, worse.. become a pig?, punishment can be beneficial but that was just a bit too much!. My empathy for the characters are strong and I can picture them slowly turning into a weird chicken-human hybrid which is worse than a chicken itself. One of the cursed kids, Cole, is a prick, and I dislike his behavior and sometimes I feel like "you deserve this" but then as he suffered more, I felt a pity and at the same time I did laugh knowing how funny that was, even his sister Crystal who also got turned into a chicken thinks it was funny to see him like that for a while. I also like how every chapters ended up with something to intrigue the readers even more, as if something big or ugly is about to happen on the next page, but then it's just a prank for example, or their minds tricking their eyes into seeing something, but it's always fun to read because you get something to push your curiosity to make you turn into the next page. 

I think this book should have more opportunities to be a comedy or even gory film, not just film, it started with reader's imagination. For example, when they get their symptoms of becoming a chicken, including pecking on the ground, I imagine it was really funny on my head, but when they started to get rid of their feathers by plucking it off everyday, it turned into a disgusting creepy graphic picture in my head, I thought "did they bleed? what about the big pores? it was itchy too! the feathers are nothing like fur or hair".

I love this book, what more can I say as I have expressed my excitement from the beginning already. But I do have some things that I see as a weakness, which is how careless the other supporting characters were, as if the physical change of Crystal and Cole's bodies were only described but didn't actually show up?. Like how in a world did they not notice Crystal and Cole's growing lips into a hard beak? they've gone to school few times after the symptoms, also their chuckoo things everytime they say something?. The parents thought it was a prank since it was Cole's fault that people won't take him serious anymore because he was known for always pulling up a prank almost every day, but if I'm a parent and my kids acted out like that, especially embarrassing themselves in front of our guests by pecking on a ground eating seeds, I would totally bring them to a doctor. But my worst guess is because it was the 90s, mental issue wasn't really a thing that people would actually be aware of, when compared to now, especially parents. 

For the way you'll be reading it, it was a first person point of view, you wouldn't get much description about other characters or the narrator herself, but it was well described, what I meant well described is that only important things get described to clear a path for our head to picture everything well without over focusing on certain object or situation that doesn't affect the whole atmosphere, therefore there wasn't much time wasted to get to the point of the story, which is good to me. Also, there wasn't a single slang that I didn't understand so it was safe for Gen Z to read, you won't have to look around google what this 90s slang means, but it could also be a good thing, to broad our mind about the 90s culture, but this shouldn't even be a problem because this obviously was made in the 90s, what should I expect?. 

All I can say this, this isn't boring, it's more like a funny story than a creepy one, so it certainly is entertaining for kids, but the ending could get you sad, creeped out, mad or something if you think of the kids as your heroine rather than the witchy Vanessha herself. Good day!